Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

“It’ll be a few hours,” he said. “The river gets rough in spots as a matter of course, and the weather today is not ideal for it.”

Aunt Germaine smiled in a kindly way. “It is preferable to the alternative—riding horseback through Indian country.”

“Oh,” said Ruth, “I don’t know about that. I always enjoyed the trek. Particularly the horses. And the Indians—the Kootenays—oh, they were never any trouble. Mr. Green and his people were always most helpful in that regard.”

“I am just as happy,” said Miss Butler. “Indians terrify me.”

“There is no reason they should,” said Ruth. “Not these days.”

“Most of ’em are over in Montana now anyhow,” said Jason. The two women looked at him, and he shrugged. “Government set up a big reserve for Kootenays last year. I expect they’re all of them headed over there by now. ’Twas all the talk of Cracked Wheel.”

Miss Butler giggled. “Cracked Wheel? What sort of name is that?”

“Name of my home town, miss,” said Jason. “It is not very large, I guess. Or it was not,” he added.

“Was?” Ruth looked at him. “Mr.—Thistledown. You speak of your town with the weight of the world on you. Is there something the matter?”

Aunt Germaine caught his eye and gave him a warning glare, but that wasn’t what shut Jason up on the subject. He didn’t want to stray back to Cracked Wheel, didn’t want to pick at the scab forming over his grief. He’d misspoke, he saw, naming it at all.

So all he said was: “Sorry I brought it up. No. Nothing’s the matter.”

Had Ruth Harper known Jason a little better, she might have known to leave it lie, let him to himself for a few minutes. As it stood, her curiosity got the better of her, and she persisted.

“You,” she said, turning a third toward him on the bench, “have a secret, Mr. Thistledown. Is it, I wonder, a secret connected to your infamous surname?”

“My infamous surname?”

“I am sure,” said Aunt Germaine, intervening, “that he is unrelated to that scoundrel.”

“Well, Madame,” said Ruth, “as his aunt, you ought to know. Still—” she turned to Jason “—those are, as they say, ‘mighty big shoes to fill.’”

“Ruth!” said Miss Butler, but Ruth rolled her eyes. She looked at Jason, and pointed with her index finger. “Bang!” she said, and giggled.

Jason felt his hands squeezing into fists. He pushed them between his knees, and took a breath.

“Miss Harper,” he said. “I must apologize but I cannot make head nor tail of what you are saying.”

Miss Butler was trying not to laugh herself by now. “You are not alone, Mr. Thistledown. She has, I daresay, read altogether too many dime novels for her own good. And your name—”

“What about my name?” said Jason.

“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Ruth, having composed herself. “Never mind having not heard of the man—it beggars the imagination to conceive that no one would have suggested to you the similarity of your own name to that of Jack Thistledown’s.”

Jason thought that he might have enjoyed studying Miss Ruth Harper from afar a little longer. He did not like this sort of conversation.

“Oh come,” said Ruth. “Jack Thistledown—hero of the Incorporation Wars. Killed a dozen men fighting against Granville Stewart and his vigilantes, over the cattle ranges of south Montana. One of three men to walk away from the shootout at Snake River. Does that not jog your memory?”

“My pa’s name was John,” said Jason.

“Jack is another name for John.”

Jason sighed. This would come up from time to time in Cracked Wheel, when fellows were passing through town and overheard someone calling his name in the store. Jason said now the same thing he’d said then.

“I didn’t know him too well. But he was no good.”

“The same might be said of Jack Thistledown,” said Ruth. “Well—this is exciting. The son of a famous gunfighter—right here on this boat! I feel I ought to be swooning.”

“Ruth!” said Miss Butler, and this time Sam Green intervened too.

“Leave the boy be, Miss Harper,” he said. “It’s his own business who his pa is.”

This seemed to make an impression on Ruth where her old friend Louise Butler could not. Her face took a more sympathetic cast.

“Of course it is,” she said. “And look—my questions have made you positively crimson! Oh, I must apologize, Mr. Thistledown. As my dear Louise attests, I am quite mad for the dime novels. And here on my way to a summer at Utopian Eliada… Well. I am too hungry for intrigue and so invent it where there is none to be found. Can you forgive me?”

Jason had not been aware that he was crimson. He was not sure he liked having it pointed out. “I can,” he said.

They sat quiet for awhile, watching the shore of the Kootenai River transform from docks to tilled field to wilderness. After a moment, Aunt Germaine excused herself to freshen up. As she did so, Jason caught Ruth looking to him again. This time she looked away quickly, and Jason was fine with that. Let her turn all crimson for a change.

“What’d your pa buy this boat for?” asked Jason as they drew around a bend and the river stretched wide before them. “If I am not prying in asking.”